


Three Steps From a Dead Planet

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, Miscarriage, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-24
Updated: 2011-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-18 15:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/190246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellen visits Caprica Six after her miscarriage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Steps From a Dead Planet

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Sinews of thy Heart](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/3085) by sunshine_queen. 



> This story is a remix of _The Sinews of thy Heart_ by sunshine_queen and was written for the 2011 BSG Remix. The original is highly recommended and can be found [here](http://olvidarling.livejournal.com/22001.html).
> 
> Many thanks to plaid_slytherin and rivendellrose for betareading.

_The rubble has crashed around them.  This planet is dead.  In a few moments all life on it will be gone.  For years Ellen has worked for this world's survival.  All in vain._

 _Saul is pulling her, trying to dig her her from the wreckage.  He's worked with her for years, but he still doesn't understand.  She can't actually call it hope, it's not enough for that, but she loves him too much to let him die.  "It's okay," Ellen says.  "Everything's in place."_

The Sixes, like Ellen's other children, will never remember their own childhood.  Her eldest son took it from them, like he took much else.  Even Ellen herself forgets sometimes, her memories coming in fragments.  Still, once it was true that Six was Ellen's beloved child, made in her image.  She had formed her, she had created her, she had breathed life into her circuits made flesh.  And only love can create life.  That Ellen knew.

On the first day Ellen stood in the doorway to sickbay and watched her daughter sleep.  _Miscarriages happen_ , she wanted to say.  Ellen had miscarried more than a few times herself.  She thought she remembered Saul's child kicking under her hand, then bloody sheets on an Earth that was long dead.  But memories are a funny thing.  Perhaps it was the birth of the Sixes that she remembered, Saul taking the first of them by the hand and beaming about what Ellen had accomplished.  _He does love you_ , she thought.  Love can make life, but it can't keep anything alive.  It never could.

 _The rubble has crashed around them.  This planet is dead.  in a few moments all life on it will be gone.  Ellen has prepared.  Five will be saved.  Sam doesn't know, although he knows most of Ellen's secrets, and neither do Saul's friends Galen and Tory.  But Ellen loves them.  She loves this planet too, and so many of the people on it.  If she were a better scientist she could have saved all of them.  If she were a better person she might have been more willing to die with those she couldn't save._

 _Saul is grabbing on to her, like he wants to die with her if he can't save her.  He can't get her out from where she is buried.  "It's okay," Ellen says.  She feels his hand clasping hers, strong and present.  She'll love him in as many lifetimes as they are allowed. "Everything's in place."_

Six was the only one of Ellen's children who never took a name.  Or to be more exact she took many names, every day a different one.  There were different outfits, too, to go with the different names.  One day she was a scholar, the next a scientist, the following day a truck-driver or a prostitute.  "I am everything in this world," she used to say.  Ellen loved her expansiveness, her longing to taste all the different pleasures the universe would offer her.  Of all Ellen's children, Six was the most like her.  And like her, Six left a world in rubble.

On the second day Ellen sat by her daughter's bed and watched her breath.  Once Ellen had loved this Six called Caprica, once she had loved this child who had loved and destroyed a world.  Once this Six called Caprica had dropped the bombs that burnt a world that gave her the name she now wore.  "I remember it all," Ellen said.  "We created you."  Six had been born in love.  Ellen had loved her. Saul had loved her. They had loved each other.  Love can create life, but it cannot sustain it.  It never could.

"Caprica," Ellen whispered.  "We love you, sweetheart." 

"Please go," her daughter answered.  She closed her eyes to end the conversation.

 _The rubble has crashed around them.  This planet is dead.  Ellen can't call it hope, the thing that she feels when Saul touches her, because she doesn't know what's going to make the next life any better than this one.  But she knows that she is not going to die._

 _"I love you, Saul," she says.  "It's ready. Everything's in place."_

When she was a girl, Ellen used to think that the rains of late winter were the tears of the Goddess Demeter as she wept over her daughter in the underworld.  As a teenager Ellen preferred to think of it as the seed of Lord Zeus as he fertilized the earth with his couplings.  "What is the rain?" Ellen had asked her young daughter once, two years after her forming, when she was just learning to explore the world outside.

"It's God's mercy," Six had said.  "It's how we know God loves us.  God sends the rain so crops can grow."  Ellen remembered the rain falling on her face the day she died for the first time.  It was radioactive, and would have killed her, but then she and her world were already dead.

On the third day after her miscarriage Six put her face to the wall so she couldn't push Ellen away.  She clasped her hands over her empty womb.  _Miscarriages happen_ , Ellen wanted to say, but then so much had happened between them that never should.  Instead she took the washcloth from the basin beside her and touched it to the back of her daughter's neck.  The water was warm as Ellen washed her.  She felt her daughter's sobs through the cloth in her hand.  She wrapped her arms around her and held her as she cried. 

 _The rubble has crashed around them.  This planet is dead.  But it's all in place.  Some few will live, will go to another world and make children and grandchildren.  Earth is dead, but life will endure._

 _"I love you, Saul," Ellen says. "Everything is in place."_


End file.
